


Gifting Food is Serious Shit

by AngeNoir



Series: Yuletide 2013 Gifts [5]
Category: Kate Daniels - Ilona Andrews
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek hasn't allowed himself to think about it - about <em>her</em>. But when she shows up and takes <em>him</em> out, dressed like that, and gives him <em>food</em>...</p><p>Derek's almost died recently. And if it's taught him anything, it's to grab onto what's in front of him because living isn't a sure thing in a post-Shift world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifting Food is Serious Shit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pameluke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pameluke/gifts).



> I'm so sorry for this. ~~I had a lot of trouble with this prompt and seeing them as a couple.~~ I hope this isn't too bad and you can get some kind of enjoyment from it.

For the most part, Derek didn’t mind scut work. Sure, he didn’t _like_ it, but the paperwork, the budget balancing, the processing of requests… it let him steady his mind. He took pleasure in the small details, in knowing he was taking care of his alpha and the Consort by doing this. Besides, it wasn’t as if Ascanio or Julie had the patience for it, and Andrea was doubly busy nowadays since a large amount of boudas had applied for pack status. She and Raphael had been out the whole week trying to deal with it.

And the Consort – well, Kate hated all and any paperwork, but she normally gritted her teeth and got it down. Still, she was ready to pop any day now, and so lived in the Keep where the medmages were on hand the minute she went into labor.

Which meant there was no one to cut the checks, handle the day-to-day shit, because Julie wouldn’t do it and Ascanio, now only part-time here and part-time with Jim, wasn’t around to do it. And, to be frank, Derek had volunteered, because he’d rather have it done neatly and professionally than sloppily.

The front door opened and he looked up, frowning. The office was closed, and all the little interns were supposed to be off somewhere doing whatever it was that made their clans stick them with Kate for most of the week.

Julie poked her head around the door and smiled wide. “Paperwork?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why’re you here?”

“Well, when I didn’t see you at the Keep I figured you came back here after this morning. And I was right.”

For a moment, there was nothing but silence as Derek stared at her and she stared back with that huge grin on her face, hidden mostly by the door. Finally, he sighed and put down his pen. “Alright, I’ll bite. Why are you here looking for me?”

“Did you eat lunch?” she asked.

The reminder made his stomach rumble, and her eyes crinkled even as she kept the rest of her face solemn.

Heaving a sigh, he shuffled the papers into order and stood up, stretching and popping his back. Fuck, he was getting old. Twenty-six, and he could swear he could _feel_ his joints stiffening. “Alright, you win,” he sighed. “Where are we going for lunch?”

She stepped back to let him walk through the door, and he locked it behind him before turning to look at her. And stared.

Julie was dressed in a warm green sundress, light and flowing around her knees, one shoulder bare. Her hair was down, and in her ears small gold studs winked. At the top of her left ear, a gold lioness curled over the ridge – a piercing that had made Curran’s eye twitch and Kate sigh about. Her eyebrow sported another stud, and she had gold bangles lining her forearms.

He continued to stare.

Her grin grew cocky, and she put her hands on her hips, angled her body. She was slender – had always been slender, and Derek could remember a skinny waif hiding next to Kate – but the past few years, for all they’d been crazy, had been kind to her, and she’d filled out some.

He’d done his damnedest not to notice.

“Ascanio told me you’d react like that,” she said, pleased. “Good.”

Jealousy shot through him – she and Ascanio had initially gotten along like oil and water, until he had managed to save her from that were-lynx, and it might have taken them a bit longer after that to really get along, but in the past two years they were twin terrors, terrorizing the pack together. At least, in those same past two years, she had stopped responding to his statements with ice and snappishness. Still, he received biting answers more often than not, and while she hadn’t lost her sarcastic nature when Ascanio was around, they pulled off more pranks and crazy shit than was probably smart. It helped that Ascanio was one of the only two male boudas of his age range, and that she was pretty much the pack princess, but Derek had had to help ground one or both of them over the past six years. He never enjoyed it.

A pleased smile played about her lips, even as she tilted her head over at the Jeep. “Magic’s down. We can drive deeper into town and have ourselves a nice meal.”

“What’s the occasion?” he managed to ask, trailing after her to the car.

She hopped into the driver’s seat, the hem of the dress swishing around her legs, and he did his best not to choke on his tongue. It was safer when she was dressing in black and trying to look like a badass. He could ignore her more easily then. “Nothing in particular. It’s just a day off, you’ve been there because I skivved out of doing the paperwork, and Ascanio’s off doing something for Jim. Maddie’s with Kevin, and here I am. Do I need a reason to do something nice?”

Her voice had grown dangerous at the end, so he bit his tongue and instead shook his head. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a nice place that has kabobs to die for – that little Mediterranean place on the corner of West?”

Derek didn’t know a polite way to ask why she was overdressed for kabobs, and didn’t particularly want to put her in a bad mood. Things had eased between them, yeah, but it was still a coin toss between her freezing him out and being playful. So he looked out the window a bit, not sure what to say. They were both adults, now – Derek was the unofficial alpha in charge of the new batch of interns from difficult parts of the pack, seeing if they’d wash out or hold, and Julie was being trained by Jim in her spare time, moving towards working, like Ascanio, part-time for him. She was a good agent, smart and quick and constantly underestimated, which she took advantage of. While he could easily put her and Ascanio down, they were both tricky enough to keep things interesting throughout all their sparring matches.

They pulled up to Ali’s, and she bounced out, moving through the door in a swirl of her own scent and a subtle perfume that he knew Margo had helped her pick out since Kate wasn’t one for that kind of stuff all that much. He followed her in, and then to a table, and then stared at  a menu while he tried to figure out how to ask.

“I can hear you brooding,” Julie murmured disapprovingly as she flipped absently through the menu.

“Trying to find a way to ask the question you know is on my mind,” he replied easily, setting the menu down. The waiter reappeared, took their orders – Julie ordered what she always did, and Derek ordered the family platter since he really was very hungry – and then left, leaving him to stare at her challengingly.

“I don’t know exactly what’s on your mind. You should verbalize it,” Julie demurred.

Licking his lips, he nodded slowly. “Alright then. Why’d you take me here, Julie? You could’ve dropped food off at the office. Hell, you could have ordered over the phone since the tech’s up and had them deliver. You didn’t. That makes me think you’re trying to give me bad news and want to soften me up with good food first.”

She let out a huff and rubbed the back of her neck a moment before, abruptly, popping up over the table and kissing him square on the mouth.

He blinked at her.

“Maddie makes it sound so much easier than it is,” Julie sighed, rubbing the back of her neck once more. “And Ascanio’s suggestions are not something I’d be comfortable with doing.”

Derek found his voice in time to rumble, “You talked to Ascanio about this?”

It must not have been a very friendly rumble, because the waiter – who had been coming back with their food – paused and stared at him wide-eyed. Julie waved him closer, took the food from him and raised an eyebrow at Derek.

“Ascanio told me that you weren’t ever going to pull your head out of your ass. And Margo and Kevin met each other when they were sixteen and have been going steady for the past three years, so her methods are a bit outdated.” Deliberately, Julie put food in front of Derek and then stared at him challengingly.

And. He really shouldn’t. She was – she was a kid compared to him. Okay, yeah, she was almost twenty, but he was twenty-six, and that was – he’d seen her as a scared child. He’d taken care of her. He’d sat by her bed as she was dying and tried to think of a way to thank Ascanio for protecting her to the best of his ability.

He swallowed.

She was also – someone he had dreamed of, at times. He’d felt guilty for all of them, and had done his best to limit that kind of thoughts. She was beautiful and spoiled and headstrong and cranky, vicious when cornered and capable of great acts of mercy and kindness. He’d seen her at her worst three years ago, yelling and throwing things at Kate in a temper tantrum that had led to half the Keep being emptied to search for her runaway ass, and seen her at her best just a year ago now, when she’d stood between Roland and Kate and managed to broker a shaky truce. She abused her position and also used it wisely.

She was nineteen years old and he desperately wanted. And they’d almost died just under two months ago, protecting the Keep – protecting Atlanta – from an ancient titan that had been awoken by some idiot with a book and the magical power to juice the spell. Nearly dying had put life in perspective from him.

Just as deliberately, he picked up his knife and fork and began to cut a piece of kabob off before eating it.

She smiled widely, skin glowing against the green and the gold shining in the muted light of the diner, and said smugly, “Ascanio owes me twenty bucks.”

He paused with the second piece of food in his mouth, something swooping low in his stomach. “What?” he asked.

“He thought it’d take me more than a month to get my shit together and finally make a move. I told him I had enough balls to do it right away. And Kate’s going to be glad I finally did this. She’s been nagging me about Aria.”

“Aria?” he repeated, his mind dredging up memories of their oldest intern, a wolf girl with more beauty than brains at times. “What about her?”

Julie chuckled gleefully.

“No, seriously, Julie, what about her?”

Julie patted his hand. “Exactly.”

He considered that answer, and her face, before giving up on the line of questioning. He had Julie. And it turned out she’d had her eye on him, too.

That was all that mattered.


End file.
